Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Conehead Wisdom for Honest Fans and Dishonest Trade

Beldar Conehead: If I did not fear incarceration of human authority figures I bring pressure to your blunt skull and cause it to collapse!

A pharmaceutical representative came in today with a legitimate concern, ticket scalping. She and her husband (a longtime Pirate fan) had tried to get tickets for the weekend series with the Bucs. Although they couldn't get tickets, scalpers had handfuls, asking 100 dollars pregame and 75 in the third inning.

Being sensible people, they passed and went home disappointed after stopping in a nearby pub. She noticed the scalper came into the pub with 'fistfuls of money' as though he were a drug dealer (obviously she hadn't read Steve Levitt's book Freakonomics and its evaluation of the economics of drug dealing).

Recently a Sox fan living in Pittsburgh (caller from sports radio) noted that his tickets (purchased from EBAY) were confiscated by the ticket scanner as EBAY resale isn't permitted.

So, if you want to get Sox tickets, you need to go through legitimate channels or go without.

Apparently, savvy management can control the isolated flow of contraband tickets via the dreaded Internet, but can't disrupt the unmitigated movement of 'legal' tickets via the street trade.

Hey, I understand the Red Sox fundamental desire- allow no one but the officialdom of the Red Sox to gouge fans for tickets. Yet, I wonder how ticket agencies and scalpers can get 'mass quantities of consumables', when the lifeblood of the franchise, John Q. Public goes empty-handed.

Perhaps legal wizard and mathematics mastermind Theo Epstein and his (fondness intended) statheads can use their books and numbers to make this right.

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